Microdirect are selling refurb Karmas for £115, it seems a good price, should I take the plunge or wait? We saw some cool stuff at Amersfoort, my only worry is they might not see the light of day and I don't really want an Ipod.

Get the Karma. If 20GB is enough space and you don't care about music subscription services there is no reason to wait.

I really prefer the Karma formfactor over the new players.

It's got a years warranty too so it looks like I'm set. I'll hit the plastic tomorrow.

Woohoo! Looks like I've got a dead one already! Will be making a trip back to the shop this afternoon. This isn't inspiring me with confidence

I've just bought a Shuffle, and my next HD player will be an Apple as well, that is unless the empeg team can come up with something to tempt me?

Cheers

Cris.

Got it swapped for one that works, which is nice, although Microdirect's returns department sucks arse.

After loading a couple of albums on and having a bit of a play, I think I prefer the Karma to the ipod. I've found the Ipod UI a little restrictive when it comes to searching and navigating music. I don't think the capacity will be an issue, all my music is in flac form now so I'll just transcode it to Ogg and stick it on the player. Getting stuff on and off it seems simple too (much easier than the empeg currently) so chopping and changing albums should be nice and simple.

For me as long as it plays music and supports a decent number of formats (which the ipod seems incapable of doing) then that's all. I can't see the point in having a colour screen, especially when it spends most of its time in your pocket and text is black and white.

That said, the Ipod's music quiz game is seriously cool!

...and I almost forgot, the karma can do gapless which the ipod currently cannot (or at least the version of firmware on SWMBOs can't).

It's amazing the number of albums other than mix stuff that use inter-track transitions that just sound crap on an ipod.

I have a shuffle that I use exclusively for podcasts and rollerblading. I'll stick with the Karma for everything else mainly because something like 70% of my music collection is in Ogg.

I like the iPod, but until it plays Ogg it's just not an option at all. I downsample everything and transcode it when I put it on my shuffle, but I'm not real concerned with missing highs and lows when I'm skating stairs and such... I'm 39 and it hurts when I fall down, so I concentrate on staying upright instead

Edit: Oh, I thought I'd add, I'd much prefer to buy another HD player from the Karma/Empeg team, and to tempt me I'd say it has to work as a mass storage device, or alternatively integrate seamlessly with iTunes on my mac (which I find myself using more and more as of late). Don't give a damn about playing protected AAC's, but I'd like to be able to fill it from my collection.

The iTunes isn't a showstopper but it's a fairly big deal. I store all my music in a tightly organized (my girlfriend says it's obsessively anal... pfft) heirarchy on my NAS, but integrating with iTunes would make it a LOT simpler for me to synch up my daily podcasts (the main reason I bought my shuffle). If it's just a simple mass storage device I can just drag and drop my podcasts as well, I guess.

Oh, it goes without saying... the player *has* to play ogg. Bookmarkable AAC would be nice too, but Ogg is a dealbreaker for me.

-- Gary F.

Here is my list of what makes a good HD player at the moment...

• Play Every Song In Random Order
  
• Upload Photos From Camera/Mem Card, then view them
  
• Have An Easy Way Of Docking In The Car (when I don't have empeg with me)
  
• Battery Last For Ages
  
• Play mp3's - All my stuff is encoded this way, anything else is wasted programming time to me.
  
• Have Lots Of Choice When It Comes To Cases
  
• Fit In My Pocket/Camera Bag Well
  

Don't get me wrong the Karma is a really really good player, the stop watch for example is a piece of art! But I use about 1% of those features. And I can't take it anywhere as it might get damaged because there isn't a decent case out there.

Without a doubt it plays music better than anything else, but I wish I had bought an iPod, but I did pay over £250 for mine not that I'm bitter!

Cheers

Cris.

That's a really good list, and I think the Ipod covers almost all the bases. But for me the camera download feature seems more like a gimmick than something I'd actually use. My iBook and its Crumpler bag is tiny and weighs bugger all so I'd probably just carry that around... and to be honest from a data integrity point of view I'd trust CF over a miniature HD any day.

The only other thing is the car docking, every ipod solution I've seen has been a piss-poor waste of space compared to just using an aux-in lead.

EDIT: and every ipod case I've seen still leaves the jog wheel unprotected, probably the only bit I'd really want I'd want to protect.